


Godfathers

by Gizzwhizz



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Best Friends, Crowley hates the 14th century, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, brief angst, mix of tv and book canon, playing with the timeline, raising the antichrist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gizzwhizz/pseuds/Gizzwhizz
Summary: The plan was simple enough. It wasn’t so different from the Arrangement, at its core. Both of them would exert their own influences, presumably evil and good, on little Warlock Dowling and, if all went right, they would cancel each other out. The same way they had been cancelling each other out for centuries now, only this time on a much smaller and more focused scale.There was, however, one tiny detail that they had both failed to take into account. Proximity.Suddenly, eleven years seemed a far more daunting stretch of time.





	Godfathers

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I read an interview where David Tennant and Michael Sheen were being dorks and Tennant mentioned that he'd like to see a spin-off of the Nanny and the Gardener. So, this one's for you, Mr. Tennant. 
> 
> I kind of mixed up the book and the show timeline and took some liberties with both, as neither places Crowley and Aziraphale in those roles for the full eleven years but I wanted it that way, so there. This was honestly a joy to write and I had a lot of fun especially showcasing our dear angel coming to his demon's aid for once, since so often it seems to be the other way around. I hope you all enjoy it!

“We’d be godfathers, sort of,” Crowley had said and something about the idea had made an odd sort of warmth blossom in Aziraphale’s chest. 

“Godfathers,” the angel had repeated, a smile spreading across his face. “Well I’ll be damned.”

 

* * *

 

 

The plan was simple enough. It wasn’t so different from the Arrangement, at its core. Both of them would exert their own influences, presumably evil and good, on little Warlock Dowling and, if all went right, they would cancel each other out. The same way they had been cancelling each other out for centuries now, only this time on a much smaller and more focused scale. 

There was, however, one tiny detail that they had both failed to take into account. Proximity. Namely, prolonged close proximity with one another. 

Oh, they had been running into one another for centuries now—sixty of them, to be exact. But there had always been time in between, time to breathe and pursue their own interests. And even if they had begun crossing paths with alarmingly increasing frequency over the course of the 20th century, they still had their separate haunts. Crowley had his flat and Aziraphale had his bookshop and they often went as much as a month or two with no contact at all. 

Rearing the antichrist necessitated a change, however. Being immortal beings, it didn’t truly dawn on either of them until nearly a week into their self-imposed assignment, but the simple truth was that they would be sharing a household for the next decade. There would be no musty books or painfully modern apartment to retreat to on a rainy afternoon or after a particularly trying day. There would be no retreating at all. 

Suddenly, eleven years seemed a far more daunting stretch of time. 

None of it was especially helped by the fact that Warlock seemed almost painfully normal as he grew. He simply refused to give in to Crowley-as-Nanny Ashtoreth’s naughtier ideas without any intervention necessary from the angel. He also possessed the frustrating trait belonging to cleverer humans to question perfectly good advice rather than simply be quiet and follow it whenever Aziraphale-as-Brother Francis tried to offer it, which was more due to the fact that children so loved questioning adults than anything having to do with the demon. 

So, in the end, it hardly seemed like any tempting or thwarting was being done by either party, not that the demon and angel in question stopped to compare notes. Thus, somewhere along the way, out of boredom more than anything else, the demon and the angel found themselves devoting less attention to Warlock himself and more of it to actually performing the tasks of their pretend roles in the lives of this human family. Which was unfortunate, because neither had quite thought through just how unsuited they were to those roles before taking them up.

* * *

 

 

Crowley had ventured into the kitchen to fix lunch for young Warlock when he was about five. It was a task he still hadn’t quite adjusted to, being used to dining out or simply miracling food when his human-shaped-body demanded it. It was, however, part of a Nanny’s duties and so, with no way around it, he found himself spreading peanut butter and jam over two thick slices of bread. With any luck he’d at least manage to convince Warlock to fling his chocolate pudding cup around the blue walls of his bedroom, but he highly doubted it. 

“Oh dear,” the softly feminine voice of Mrs. Harriet Dowling said behind him. He could just spy her in the reflection of the toaster, staring out of the kitchen’s expansive windows into the yard as she cradled her phone against the side of her face. “The petunias didn’t come in _again_ this year, and now even the hedges are looking wilted,” she complained, shading her eyes with one manicured hand. “I just don’t know, Rebecca. Brother Francis is so _nice_ and I know he adores Warlock, but, really, what good is a gardener who can’t, you know, garden?” There was a pause as Rebecca offered her opinion on the matter, but Crowley didn’t expend any energy to try and hear her response. 

_He_ had certainly thought that the plants on the impressive grounds of the American Cultural Attaché were lackluster at best, but he also had certain standards that even he could admit were somewhat higher than your average human’s. Apparently, though, he wasn’t the only one who thought so, anymore. Oh, it wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault, not really. The angel had never been good with living things. He preferred his books. Why he had even stationed himself as the gardener of all things escaped Crowley’s comprehension entirely.  

Still, he couldn’t very well stand back and let the angel be sent away. Even if he was fired as gardener, he’d no doubt be back under a new disguise for some other position in the house, but that wasn’t the _point_. No, something had to be done. Crowley was so preoccupied with his thoughts on the matter, in fact, that he quite forgot to encourage little Warlock to forego all table manners when he finally brought the boy his lunch. 

That night was moonless, luckily enough, and so Crowley had to exert very little of his own powers to divert patrolling guards and encourage certain security cameras to turn just slightly to allow a black-clad figure to slip unnoticed into the grounds. He still wore the appearance of Nanny Ashtoreth as a precaution, but when he approached one of the hedges Mrs. Dowling had been talking about he let the feminine lilt to his voice fall away into a low growl as he reached out to pluck a yellowing leaf from a branch. 

“Now sssee here,” he hissed, appreciating the way the hedge’s leaves shifted despite the fact that there was no breeze to move them. “Listen up, you sssorry excuse for shrubbery, and you’d best passss the message on to your friends. There will be no Wilting around here, do you understand? If I so much as sssee another drooping leaf, you can bet there will be a most unfortunate incident with a weed wacker in your future, am I understood?” He leaned in a little closer as the leaves shivered uneasily again. “And if that isn’t motivation enough for you, I can alwaysss resort to fire. An oldie but a goodie, fire is. Alwaysss gets the job done.” 

The leaves shook more violently and Crowley leaned back, satisfied, before glancing around. “Now, where are those damned stubborn petunias supposed to be?” he asked. He had, in fact, been taking to himself, but one of the hedge’s branches shifted as if to point the way and he found himself patting the leaves almost the same way one would pat the head of a well behaved dog. Soundlessly, he moved to stand over the bare flower bed and planted his hands on his hips. 

“And jussst what do you lot think you’re doing?” he snarled at the seeds hidden beneath the soil. 

* 

“It’s the damnedest thing, Rebecca,” Mrs. Dowling said, standing once more at the kitchen window a week later. “I’ve never seen the yard so green. And the flowers! One day there was nothing and then they were just there, like magic!” There was a pause as Rebecca offered her own unheard thoughts on the turn of events. 

Crowley was, once again, busy making Warlock’s lunch, but he allowed himself a smug smile as he listened in on the phone conversation.

  

* * *

 

 

Mr. Thaddeus J. Dowling wasn’t home often. Despite being dispatched to Britain, he seemed to spend the vast majority of his time in America. When he _was_ at home, he was fond of sitting in the garden and working his way through a stack of different newspaper publications, both American and British, that all said essentially the same things in a dozen different ways. He would interact with his wife, briefly, when she came out to refresh his drink, and if Warlock happened to venture past in the midst of playing he would stop his son to quiz him on various topics. 

That was how Aziraphale found himself within earshot one fateful afternoon when Warlock was seven and his father had snared him as he ran past collecting bugs in a jar. 

“Yes, yes, that’s very good,” Mr. Dowling said when Warlock rattled off a few multiplications tables, maths being his strongest subject, a fact that was distressing to the entire household. “But what do you know about history, eh, son? A good foundation starts early, especially if you’re going to follow in your old man’s footsteps. Now, I know you’re still young, but surely you’ve started in on the bigger events in history by now, right? The Greeks, The Romans, the Plague, World War II, that sort of stuff?” 

There was a silence broken only by the quiet drizzle of Aziraphale’s watering can over a patch of roses that, much like the rest of the garden, seemed to thrive no matter how much or how little he actually watered them. 

“What’s the Plague?” Warlock finally asked. Aziraphale swallowed, not an easy feat considering that the guise he’d taken on as Brother Francis had entirely too many teeth crammed into his mouth. 

“What’s the Plague?!” Mr. Dowling repeated, slapping his paper together and sitting up sharply. “The Bubonic Plague? The Black Death? Killed two-thirds of Europe? Any of this ringing a bell?” Warlock must have shook his head because Thaddeus Dowling sighed. “What is that Nanny teaching you?” he muttered. 

“Nanny teaches me lots of things,” Warlock piped up in Crowley’s defense and Aziraphale very nearly turned around to cheer the boy on. 

“Yes, I’m sure she does,” Mr. Dowling said in a doubtful sort of way that implied just the opposite. He sighed again and there was the rustling of paper as he repositioned himself. “Alright, dismissed. Go back to your bug hunting.” Tiny feat scurried away and Aziraphale digested the information as he made his way around the flowerbeds with his watering can. 

It shouldn’t have surprised him that Crowley had opted to skip the 14th century in his lesson plan, never mind if it was necessary for a well-rounded education. He had only seen Crowley once before the demon had simply disappeared (Aziraphale strongly suspected he had decided it was best for everyone if he slept through the rest of it, much as he's done with the 19th century, but the angel had never checked). From what he remembered, the normally cool demon had looked nearly frantic as he’d demanded to know whose side was responsible for the wave of death sweeping through humanity. 

_“Because it bloody well wasn’t us, I can tell you that much, Angel,” Crowley had raved, tugging at his auburn hair hard enough that several strands had come free to tangle in his fingers.  
_

_“It wasn’t us either, as far as I know,” Aziraphale had tried to soothe the demon, honestly alarmed at the wild look in his yellow eyes. “It’s a disease, Crowley. They don’t understand what that is or how to properly fight it yet, that’s all.” He had offered up what he had hoped was a bracing smile. “These things just happen sometimes.”  
_

_“There’s just so many of them,” Crowley had replied, his voice hushed now and his eyes troublingly glassy. “Dying. All of them.” Then he’d rubbed a hand over his haggard looking face, not even caring that it displaced his tinted glasses. “My head hurts. I need a nap.”  
_

_“Crowley!” Aziraphale had tried to regain his attention, but the demon had simply turned and drifted back into the shuffling, miserable crowd. And that was the last Aziraphale had seen of him for nearly a hundred years.  
_

Crowley didn’t care for death. He didn’t revel in it the way some demons (and even angels, if Aziraphale was being honest) did. He preferred life. Still, the demon’s reaction had been surprising. Aziraphale hadn’t particularly enjoyed that time period himself, but he hadn’t been nearly as effected as his demonic counterpart. Crowley had seemed downright haunted. Not for love of humans, of course, that was entirely too angelic. Rather, it seemed that the overpowering presence of Death had simply been too much for the poor demon. 

No, Aziraphale couldn’t stand by while Crowley was forced to relive such painful memories, as he surely would be once Mr. Dowling got ahold of him to discuss Warlock’s education. It wasn’t a topic that the angel enjoyed either, and his purpose here was to talk to the young antichrist about just about anything _but_ death, and yet he found himself glancing about the garden for the boy anyway. 

He found him easily enough, poking something on the ground with a stick. 

“Well, if it isn’t Young Master Warlock,” he greeted easily. Warlock looked up and immediately held up his jar as if in defense. 

“I’m collecting beetles, Brother Francis. See? I’m not hurting them. They have some grass and a twig and everything!” 

Aziraphale chuckled and moved to sit beside Warlock on the grass, playing up the pretend stiffness in his muscles as he shifted position. He was supposed to be a rather old man, after all, and playing the part was one of the few parts of this whole charade that he genuinely enjoyed. 

“That’s very good, Young Master Warlock,” he praised, patting the boy’s blond head until he relaxed and lowered the jar. “You know, I couldn’t help but overhear you and your father just now.” 

“I hope I don’t get Nanny into any trouble,” Warlock admitted mournfully. “I didn’t know I was supposed to know about some play.” 

“Plague, dear,” Aziraphale corrected, forgetting himself for a moment and slipping into his old speech patterns. He cleared his throat and laced his fingers around one knee. “And I’m sure you won’t get her in trouble. It’s…a subject she doesn’t much like, you see. I suspect that may be why she skipped it.” 

He leaned in closer and lowered his voice, tilting his head in that particular way that signaled a conspiracy was about to be struck, the somewhat magical kid of secret that could only exist between the very young and the very old. 

“You know, Young Master Warlock, your Brother Francis knows a thing or two about history himself. Perhaps I could tell you all about it, and your father need never know you didn’t learn it from Nanny, hmmm?” 

The young boy perked up and nodded his head quickly. Carefully, he set his jar of beetles aside and crossed his legs in the grass to give Aziraphale his full attention. The angel was certain it wouldn’t last, but hopefully he could instill a few important facts before the boy’s attention span ran out entirely. 

“Well,” he began, fighting his own tendency to fidget. “You see, a plague is a disease that makes a lot of people sick all at once. And this one is important because it affected so very many people...” 

* 

Aziraphale didn’t get to see the direct results of his impromptu lesson, given that he had his own little cottage away from the main house and took his supper alone there. Had he been at the table that night, however, he would have had the pleasure of witnessing the very undignified sight of Crowley choking on a head of broccoli as Warlock gleefully informed his father that the song “Ring Around the Rosie” was actually about the Black Death.

 

* * *

 

 

“Angel!” Crowley roared as he invaded the cottage that night without so much as knocking on the door. Aziraphale looked up from the book he’d been reading to find the demon glowering at him from behind his ever-present sunglasses. “ _What_ have you been telling that boy?” Crowley demanded, his normal voice completely at odds with his current disguise. It would have been comical, if anger wasn’t rolling off of him in nearly palpable waves. Aziraphale held up a finger, closed and locked the door before checking that the windows were properly shaded, and let the guise of the old gardener melt away. He wasn’t prepared to try his hand at a verbal sparring match with the demon without the correct number of teeth in their proper alignment, thank you very much. 

“I’m assuming this is about the 14th century,” he said, only afterwards realizing it was the first time he’d properly heard his voice— _his_ —in some months at least. Maybe a year? Crowley didn’t respond but raised a hand to snap his fingers and suddenly the dress melted into a black suit and his already tall form shrank an inch as the high-heeled boots disappeared with it. 

“Now, just listen,” Aziraphale said, holding up both hands as if to fend off a physical blow. “Mr. Dowling was quizzing Warlock about history and discovered you’d…skipped certain topics. And I know what a hard time of it you had, my dear, so I-I stepped in to help, that’s all. I mean, imagine if he’d decided to replace you? Then where would we be?” 

Crowley seemed to deflate a bit at that and all but fell into one of two hard chairs around the tiny table by the cottage’s door. “At least tell me you have some wine in here,” he said, tossing his glasses on the table and scrubbing his face with his palms. Aziraphale didn’t, as a matter of fact, but he miracled a bottle from the shop along with two glasses. As he urged the cork to pop free with the flick of a finger he wondered if he might not be reprimanded again for “too many frivolous miracles,” but just then Crowley looked far too miserable for him to care. 

“And ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ is _not_ about the Plague, just so you know,” Crowley muttered as he accepted a glass of wine. “That’s a rumor my lot started. I expected you to be better informed, Angel.” 

“Well how was I to know that?” Aziraphale sputtered, feeling his face grow hot and trying to hide it behind his wine glass. He settled in the other chair, across the table from the demon. 

“You read books all day!” 

“Not anymore I don’t,” the angel shot back hotly. “Now all my time is spent…oh, trying to keep the blasted yard alive!” He waved a hand vaguely at the shaded window. 

“Ha!” Crowley threw his head back in a sarcastic laugh that made Aziraphale pause mid-sip. 

“What?” he finally asked, cautiously lowering his glass. “What is it?” 

“You couldn’t keep a cactus alive,” Crowley snorted. “Some gardener you turned out to be.” Aziraphale looked from the demon to the window-shade and back again. 

“You don’t mean…you haven’t been…Crowley, what have you _done_?” He demanded, leaning over the little table towards his companion until it rocked a bit. One leg was slightly shorter than the rest, but Aziraphale could never seem to determine just which one was the culprit and had thus given up trying long ago. 

“Oh, relax, Angel. I just gave the garden a good dose of Fear, that’s all. You should be thanking me, really. They were getting ready to sack you,” Crowley said, rolling his yellow eyes. 

“Oh. Really?” Aziraphale said quietly, settling back in his chair. He swirled the wine in his glass and glanced back up at Crowley. “Well, that was very—,” 

“Nope, stop right there!” Crowley said, pointing an accusing finger. “If you say one _nice_ word to me, I’m leaving.” Aziraphale obediently fell silent and for a long few minutes all they did was sip their glasses. At last, Crowley knocked back the rest of his and reached for the bottle to refill it. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I can hand handle four more years of this without cracking,” the demon suddenly confessed. He poured himself considerably more wine than Aziraphale had initially parsed out for them and held the bottle out for the angel, who copied the action with his own glass. 

“Oh, thank Heaven. I thought I was the only one having rather a rough go of it,” he said with genuine relief. Reaching up, Aziraphale tugged his bowtie lose and undid the top button of his collar, a true testament to just how rough it really had been going. It was all well and good to joke about being godfathers to the antichrist, but actually carrying out the thing was full of far more tedious and mundane _life_ than either of them had rightly expected. 

Crowley watched the angel’s perfect posture slump in exhaustion and felt a pang of sympathy, which he immediately hid by taking another healthy swallow of wine and running his fingers through his thick hair. 

“No,” he finally said, the word riding out on a sigh. “No, it has been rather—” 

“—Trying?” 

“Hellish,” Crowley amended, and the angel didn’t argue. “It’s been ages since either of us had to pull a long con like this, hasn’t it?” he mused, kicking one of his feet up onto the edge of the table. “I’d forgotten how time starts to _crawl_ by after a while.” 

Aziraphale wrinkled his nose at the snakeskin shoe on his table. He didn’t move to shove it off, however, and so it remained. In truth, he rather suspected that Crowley needed the moment to just be himself every bit as badly as Aziraphale did. (And while he would never admit it aloud, there was a part of him that was somewhat relieved to see Crowley finally behaving as he usually did after so long spent hiding their true natures.) 

“Yes,” he finally said, leaning back until his own chair creaked. “Quite.” 

“I mean, the boy is one thing,” Crowley griped around another mouthful of wine, “but then there’s his parents—” 

“—And the lawn—” 

“—And the cooking—” 

“—And the flowers—” 

“—And the books, and the list goes one” Crowley muttered, mussing his own hair again. Aziraphale felt a smile wanting to bloom on his face at the movement and just managed to control it before those slit-pupils focused back on him. 

“Listen,” Crowley said, dropping his foot back to the floor to lean over the table and making it wobble a bit under the new, uneven weight. Aziraphale grabbed up the half-empty bottle by the neck before it could topple. “You don’t think he’s _too_ normal, do you?” 

“Who? The boy?” Aziraphale asked, tilting his head as he thought. “No, my dear. That is to say, wasn’t that rather the point?” Crowley leaned back and hoisted his foot back onto the table. 

“No, you’re right. Everything’s evening out. I suppose I just expected more of a challenge, you know? More back and forth, push and pull. _Something_.” 

“I’d be offended, except that I know what you mean,” Aziraphale said with a low chuckle. “He seems…impervious to either of us. It hardly feels like thwarting at all, most days.” 

“Or tempting,” Crowley agreed with a nod. Another beat of silence filled the cottage as the wine bottle was passed back and forth a third time. 

“You don’t suppose…” the demon began. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted sharply. “No. Absolutely not! I haven’t given seven years to this mad scheme of yours just to have you get bored and call it off! Besides, we’re over halfway there.” 

“Alright, alright,” Crowley muttered, holding up a placating hand. “Fine. You’re right, happy? Demon, alright? We tend to get distracted by shiny things and there is decidedly nothing shiny around here.” He tipped his head back with a prolonged groan that reminded the angel a bit too much of the fits Warlock could throw when he was resisting all attempts to make him finish his homework. 

When Crowley picked his head up again, however, his golden eyes were sparkling and there was the shadow of a grin on his face. 

“But,” he said slowly, drawing the vowel out, “dear old Nanny hasn’t taken a Holiday in, well, in years! Not even Christmas!” 

Aziraphale offered a perfectly pleasant smile to the idea and decided that he was entirely above the spike of jealousy that hit him square in the chest. 

“You’ve certainly earned it, my dear,” he offered, raising his glass in Crowley’s direction. “And, you know, if you wouldn’t mind looking in on the bookshop I would be ever so—” 

“Oh don’t be daft!” Crowley cut in with a snort. “Honestly, sometimes you’re so slow on the uptake, Angel. I’ll never understand how someone so very clever can be so very stupid sometimes.” 

“Now see here,” Aziraphale began, feeling heat rise to his cheeks, but Crowley was already plowing ahead. 

“I didn’t just mean _me_. You need to get out of here just as badly as I do.” Aziraphale blinked at the finger Crowley was now pointing at him and swallowed. 

“Oh,” he said, and had to take another sip of wine as the idea sank in properly. “Oh, but I couldn’t just leave,” he finally managed, without even bothering to offer a proper excuse. Crowley, predictably, pounced on it. 

“Of course you can!” the demon argued. “Tell them your…” he waved his hand vaguely through the air, “granddaughter is sick. Tell them your dog is sick. Tell them your granddaughter’s dog is sick, whatever you like.” 

Aziraphale licked his lips and took a very deep breath, watching his wine slide back and forth in his glass for a long moment as he considered. 

“I suppose I can come up with some excuse. Oh, but it would be good to poke my head into the shop again,” he said with a smile that he knew was looking a bit forlorn around the edges. 

“It’s set, then,” Crowley said with a finality that dared Aziraphale to argue with him. “I’ll even take you out to dinner,” he added as if to sweeten the deal. Almost immediately Aziraphale’s smile grew more genuine. To the demon’s credit, it hardly even felt like being tempted. 

“Very well, my dear,” he said and raised his glass to seal the agreement with a toast. It may have been his imagination, or the wine finally getting to work on his system, but the resulting clink of glassware seemed to hang about in the air much longer than was either possible or necessary.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you know what I still can’t believe?” Crowley asked through a sudden breathless fit of laughter that had come quite out of nowhere. They were sitting at a table at the Ritz (not the one in the corner where they had sat when Crowley had treated them on their much needed holiday-from-the-antichrist four years ago, but at one nearer the door on the first day of the Rest of the World) just digging into the dessert course. 

“What might that be, my dear boy?” Aziraphale asked obligingly as he dug his spoon into a simply divine piece of tiramisu. 

“Not only,” Crowley began, and then had to pause to muffle another giggle before he could form proper words. “Not _only_ did we spend eleven years in deep cover, as it were, but it was with the _wrong boy_!” 

This time when the demon burst into laughter, Aziraphale did, too, completely heedless of the less-than-amused looks their behavior was drawing. The angel was the first to remember his manners and try to smother his mirth, of course. The demon hardly cared but finally began to reign himself in when Aziraphale nudged his snakeskin shoe under the table. Still, it was nice to laugh. It was nice to be _able_ to laugh, especially at themselves, after everything that had happened. 

“Really, my dear, I have no idea how you kept that disguise up for so long,” Aziraphale teased. Nanny Ashtoreth had been so severe, after all, with her back always ramrod straight. There was no room at all for Crowley’s normal slouching posture, much like the way he was sitting now with his arms thrown over the sides of his chair and his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankle. 

“Me? What about you?” Crowley shot back with another snort of laughter. “With all those teeth. I never did understand how you _ate_ in that body.” Aziraphale glanced away as his cheeks grew hot, ducking his head and taking a sip of water. 

“Yes, well, I usually changed back for that,” he admitted quietly. “I had my own cottage,” he added quickly when Crowley’s laughter evaporated into a rather stricken look. 

“Cheater,” Crowley accused. Aziraphale sat up a little straighter in his chair. 

“It most certainly was _not_ cheating,” he huffed. 

“You…you dirty cheating, cheater. And you call yourself an angel!” His voice had dropped into a growl, but it wasn’t dangerous, not really. A hint of danger, perhaps, but there was still too much good cheer between them at the moment for a proper argument to break out. Which Aziraphale was all too thankful for. His memories of the last hours before Armageddon were still admittedly hazy and would likely remain that way—probably for the best—but he had no desire whatever to fight with his demon just now. 

(Having been incorporeal at the time, Aziraphale hadn’t gotten a good look at Crowley when he’d found him quite literally drowning his sorrows in a pub just before everything really kicked off. Even without seeing his face, though, he’d felt the grief coming off of him in sour waves. And the way he’d said, _“Somebody killed my best friend,”_ wasn’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon.) 

“Make it up to me,” Crowley suddenly demanded, breaking into Aziraphale’s thoughts. The angel blinked widely at him, but Crowley wasn’t tempting him. At least, not that he could detect. And while he did want to get properly re-settled into his shop, he had also just spent nearly eleven years in daily proximity to the demon and part of him wasn’t ready to break that habit just yet. 

Maybe he’d never be ready to break it. 

“I think I once promised you a picnic,” he offered after a moment’s thought. He half-expected Crowley to shoot the idea down out of hand, and perhaps pre-Apocalypse Crowley would have. Post-Apocalypse Crowley, however, merely watched him from behind his sunglasses and sipped his dessert coffee. 

“Alright. That’s a start,” the demon finally said. 

“A start?” Aziraphale squawked, but there was a smile already tugging at his lips and completely ruining any pretense of outrage. Crowley tipped his glasses down just enough to let Aziraphale catch a glimpse of naked golden eyes, the pupils gone wide with celebration and alcohol until they looked almost human apart from the color. 

“For eleven years with my back aching from those blasted boots? Yeah. It’s a start.” The tone was flat, but Crowley was grinning right back at him. 

Several thoughts went through Aziraphale’s mind just then. One was that prolonging his “debt” could serve them both as it would likely ensure that the angel got to see Crowley on a regular basis. Another was that before last week he would have fretted himself into a fit at the very thought of being indebted in any way to a demon. But the idea didn’t seem so terrible now, especially not when that demon was Crowley. 

And the last thought, the one that made his breath catch in his chest just a little, was that he’d never seen his demon look so simply _happy_ before. 

“To godfathers,” Aziraphale said, raising his water glass in what was probably their fifth or sixth toast of the evening and ignoring the way Crowley groaned. “May neither of us have need to shoulder the title ever again.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Crowley muttered as he knocked his coffee cup against the water glass. Aziraphale didn’t have to ask to know that the black coffee had suddenly gained a few extra ingredients of the Irish variety. Likewise, when he took a sip of his own glass he found that the water had miraculously become a gin and tonic. 

“So, next week then?” his demon asked, draping himself over his chair once more. Aziraphale enjoyed another spoonful of tiramisu and patted his lips with his napkin before responding. 

“I was rather thinking something sooner, unless you’ve other plans?” 

“Plans? I wasn’t even planning to be alive, today, Angel.” 

“Well, then, how about tomorrow? The afternoon is supposed to be lovely and not overly hot, I believe, though I admit I didn’t exactly have time to check the report.” 

“It’s a date.”


End file.
